Oh yeah, it’s this crappy post from ReadWriteWeb on the new Google Maps Flash API. I have no problem with a Flash API for Google Maps. Power to the people! But I did have a massive gag reaction to the following fairy tale:

A substantial portion of the web’s creativity can be found in the Flash developer community. Adobe’s AIR platform is one of the hottest development environments in the consumer market today and is being deployed with increasing frequency in the enterprise as well. Live Google Maps in Flash are likely to be used in even more creative ways than the existing javascript API has been. Javascript can be used in AIR but it’s rarely used as attractively as Flash often is.

It doesn’t end there, although my ability to keep food down did:

Throw some Flash Google Maps into the mix and things are liable to really get interesting.

Are you kidding me? Hey, I’m glad Flash is open, but I have no love for an alternate Web.

More creative ways than the JS APIs? Haven’t seen any creative uses of JS have you?

One of the hottest development environments? For making Twitter clones?

5 Comments

I actually think the bit almost seems sarcastic. “One of the hottest … in the consumer market today” and “is being deployed with increasing frequency in the enterprise as well.” sound like classic marketing phrases to my ears. Especially because I wouldn’t call the market for “development environments” a consumer one. But hey, maybe that’s just me. And then the fact that the first part of the sentence is classical, and then they stuff in the enterprise bit to make it sound like it’s not just idiots who are using it, conveniently failing to back any of the claims up with actual statistics or facts. [citation needed] would do well here. Either that or {{weasel}}.

Irakli Gozalishvili said,

I don’t pay much attention to the post from ReadWriteWeb, but I would like to post my opinion here about Adobe Air. I think it quite new and really promising technology. Actually it’s straight competitor to the mozilla’s XUL technology. Yeas of’course there a lot of differences but still …

I thin that actually can become “one of the hottest development environments” as the RIA is the future. Me personally with all my hurt and soul with mozilla, but Adobe mostly provides great tools for the development. As today there is no normal tool for the xul development. I think this fact is very important and Mozilla have to do something about that.

pd said,

As much as I hate to admit it, Flash is taking over the web. One reason is video hosting. The standards-compliance community has dragged it’s arse forever in so many ways but video support is just another one of those. There is no guarantee this will change either because of the lack of a universal codec for the HTML5 video element which itself will not be supported across an installed browser base until well into the next decade.

Adobe has strategically inserted Flash into the very space that browser developers wish they had – influence on other browsers without the endless snail-paced negotiations on standards and politics. They are the only company to achieve this and that is an unfortunate fact of life. Unfortunate because monopolies in any walk of life are not useful.

When people refer to ‘more creative ways’ Mark I think you need to think laterally beyond your understanding of JS vs Flash as code. I think when people talk about Flash and ‘creative’ they are talking about the superior visual effects that can be more easily achieved with Flash.than JS. Back to my earlier point, simply supporting video is also ‘creative’ and JS doesn’t really do this. Moving on, despite the plethora of progressing JS libraries out there, why would a person from a graphic design point of view choose JS over the Flash IDE? Really there is no JS IDE and call me a stereotyper but the sort of people (graphic design oriented people) who produce slick ‘creative’ content are not likely to choose a text editor (for JS authoring) when they can use the Flash IDE.

I think you need to stop looking at Flash vs JS as an oranges vs oranges argument Mark. They can both be used to achieve similar ends but they go about it in a massively different way.

If you want to fight the good fight against Flash, I think you’d be better off taking a meta view of the whole scene rather than continually rebounding from bullshit marketing spiels.

Who ever expected marketing spiels to be accurate anyway?

I think that there’s hope in the idea that somehow (I don’t remember or understand the details) a version of JS can be integrated into any browser in the future. Something to do with tamarin or *monkey wasn’t it? I think a person with your influence should focus on that as a solution but even if that is achieved, there is still a lack of an IDE for web apps. Some might say Aptana is approaching that or throw around Eclipse (never used it but people throw around it’s name so often, anyone would start to think it’s a panacea) but I’m not sure about that.

Having said all of the above, I understand if you just felt the need to counteract propaganda and blow off steam

I’m gradually becoming less of a Flash-hater, as much as I hate to admit it. I also gave in to Eclipse, though I intend to give OpenKomodo a try – I really liked Komodo Edit 4 and as a XUL developer I really love the idea of an IDE that supports XUL Overlays.

Though loaded with java bloat, Eclipse is great. I believe Aptana is based on eclipse, and I know for sure that Flex is. Flex is surely the way to go about writing Air apps, not the Flash IDE. I like some things about Flex but Flash as a development tool is totally brain-dead.

Also, Mark, you are not alone, I do think that the article in question is liable to induce vomiting.